JERK

Photographer | Warwick Gow

JERK 
DƷƏːK/

1. A quick, sharp sudden movement. A physical twitch, a jolt.
2. Discontinuous. Deviation.
3. Someone needlessly rude.

JERK is a new contemporary performance by Ruby Donohoe about her experience of living with epilepsy and what the notion of an ‘out-of-body experience’ means for a species so tethered to the idea of body as self.

ABOUT THE SHOW
JERK is an irreverent free-fall based on my experience of living with epilepsy. Shapeshifting between the autobiographical body and the abstracted body, JERK inhabits a performative space between the experiential and the named, the chasm between the body and the body explained, and all that happens between cornflakes for breakfast and when the lights go out (and nobody is home). JERK explores what it means to have an out-of-body experience for a species tethered to the notion of body as self. 

The title is drawn from the small, involuntary movements experienced before and during a seizure. The etymology of the word informs both content and form as the work dives into what it means to deviate/disrupt/interrupt, the uncontrollable, the not-suitable-for-public, the hypersensitive, the dissonance between the intentional and the involuntary, defiant misremembering, and what it means to be a jerk as a woman. 

CREATIVE TEAM
Ruby Donohoe Director, Writer, + Performer
Jenni Large Collaborator + Performer
Chucho Bruno Sound Design
Ash Musk Dramaturge

This project has been supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, Sunshine Coast Council RADF, Access Arts Queensland, and Epilepsy Queensland.